


Peace in the Struggle to Find Peace

by SBG



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-25
Updated: 2011-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 12:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SBG/pseuds/SBG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2.10 tag; Steve has suffered days of torture and a long journey home. He finds peace in a place that should be unexpected, but isn't at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peace in the Struggle to Find Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from a song that has spawned about four billion fan vids and fic - Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (which, btw, never fails to make me teary, not that you needed to know that about me).

Steve was going to be fine. He wouldn’t lie and say being betrayed by a friend and days of torture at the hands of someone he could only think of as a nemesis, unoriginal as that was, were a day on the beach. None of it had been. The stink of his own burned flesh would not leave his nose, the taste of blood lingered at the back of his throat, the image of Jenna’s face in the moments before her death was tattooed onto his eyelids. He wasn’t sure he’d ever completely forgive her, but that face. Her wrenching sorrow, her last act on Earth being to give him hope where there hadn’t been any, he couldn’t forget those things, either.

It had been days, but it felt like an hour ago and years past at the same time. His body had begun to heal, and he knew what he needed to do to help his head heal as well. PTSD had many different ways of manifesting. Some, he already knew. Some, he would come to know. He was as prepared as he could be for that, but at the moment he couldn’t shake Jenna and he couldn’t shake Wo Fat. As much as he wanted his rage to fuel him, his body was exhausted. All he wanted was bed and sleep and memories dimmed for a few precious hours. Slumber, with no dreams.

“You need something to eat, maybe?” Danny asked, voice almost too low to hear over the rumble of the engine. “I could pull over and grab something.”

“No,” Steve said, though he hadn’t eaten much since he’d been rescued and probably should have been starving by now. “No, I just need to get some rest.”

“It’s been a long trip home.”

Steve noticed Danny’s use of the word home, if Danny didn’t himself. Some of the tension in his body eased, which felt good but also cleared the way for the bone deep weariness to really hit him. He’d endured torture before. This was different, personal, and he didn’t want to think about it anymore but he couldn’t not think about Wo Fat’s angry face, Jenna’s sorrowful, knowing one. It had been all he could think of, once it was over. During the ordeal, though, he’d done as he’d only jokingly told Danny and thought of his friend the whole time, until Danny appeared at the back of the truck. The only face he hadn’t expected was the only one he’d wanted to see. That was what he had to think about again, not the rest of it.

If only his brain would cooperate. Jenna’s cross felt like it might be burning a hole in his pocket. He hadn’t shared that with anyone, not yet. It was his alone.

“Very long,” Steve said.

It wasn’t their usual banter. It was too soon for that, and he was grateful Danny understood. Despite the lighthearted helo trip between North and South Korea that they’d _all_ needed, things didn’t snap back into shape like a rubber band. Steve knew the “humanitarian mission” had affected all of his team. Joe had explained the cover story to him at some point in a hospital in Seoul, while he was getting patched up and the doctors told him things he already knew. What they all needed was time.

He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of traffic, let the white noise numb him.

“Hey, we’re here,” Danny murmured into his right ear.

He opened his eyes, and realized he had dozed off. They were parked at his house. They hadn’t been that far away, the sleep he’d gotten only made him feel worse. Danny leaned partially into the car on the passenger side, looked like he was preparing to haul Steve over his shoulders to get him out. Steve cleared his throat and waved a hand limply. His shoulders ached from being hung up like the punching bag he’d been. He hated showing weakness under normal circumstances, but it was less annoying around Danny. He didn’t mind Danny seeing him like this, but everyone else, he couldn’t take it. Kono and Lori had spent the whole flight from Seoul staring at him like he could disappear any moment, and Chin had a haunted, almost pitying look in his eyes. Danny just _saw_ him, the way he always did, and he needed that right now.

He swung his legs out, allowed Danny to help pull him up. He was happy for the contact, actually, the steady presence next to him. Danny was small, but strong as a workhorse. Steps from his front door, and Steve’s legs felt boneless. He figured the last vestiges of his most recent adrenaline burst were fading away. It was good. The more exhausted he was, the more likely his sleep wouldn’t be filled with horror.

“You sure you don’t want something to eat before you hit the sack? A bowl of Raisin Bran?”

“No, it’s okay,” Steve said. He shuffled toward the stairs. His feet hurt, the bottoms cut and bruised, though Danny and Chin had tried to take most of his weight. “I’m gonna sleep.”

“Okay,” Danny said, all reasonable and calm and not like himself but again exactly what Steve needed. “Good, you have to be tired.”

Steve felt his partner’s eyes on him the whole, laborious trek up the stairs. Later, they’d talk or eat or whatever, probably both; he knew Danny. He collapsed on the bed without pulling the sheets back, without shutting his bedroom door. It was still light out and would be for several more hours. It didn’t matter. Within seconds of becoming horizontal, he was unconscious.

He awoke in a cold sweat, and already halfway up in a seated position. _It wasn’t for nothing,_ Jenna said in his head. Steve struggled to get his breath under control. His brain didn’t remember the nightmare, but his body did. He shifted to the edge of the bed, fought with the sheets he’d somehow gotten under while sleeping. He slipped off the bed and padded down the hall to hit the head. He was still tired, but he didn’t want to sleep anymore, partly afraid next time he’d remember it all instead of only being left with residual reaction. He stood in his bedroom doorway for a minute, maybe two, though he didn’t know why. Downstairs, there was no bluish flickering brightness from the television. He frowned and moved to the head of the stairs.

Danny was on the sofa, but he wasn’t sleeping and he wasn’t watching TV. He was just sitting there, staring at the coffee table. He looked up, though, when he heard Steve coming down. He didn’t move.

“Sleep well?” Danny asked.

“Mostly,” Steve said, as he moved like an old man for the unoccupied half of the sofa. “You know how it goes.”

“No, I don’t, exactly, but I can imagine.”

Steve didn’t want anyone, least of all Danny, to imagine torture and desperation so profound it had its own smell, acrid as it came out of every pore.

“No TV?”

“I am loath to admit this, but I think I’ve finally grown used to the obnoxiously loud waves crashing over and over,” Danny said, with a shrug and a sidelong glance. “Besides, I don’t feel like sleeping.”

Danny had to be exhausted, but Steve didn’t push. He knew what it was to see things and feel things and not want to. He thought of Chin telling him, lowly and out of Danny’s earshot, how Danny had known the second they’d found Jenna’s connection to the Bethany Morris murder that something was very wrong. Where the rest of them had been willing to find reasonable explanations, Chin said Danny had just known. Steve wasn’t sure what that meant, but he had a good idea that Danny’s concern had made the rescue extra difficult for him. Not that the others hadn’t been worried, it was just … Danny was his partner, and he knew he was Danny’s closest friend.

“I’m going to make a sandwich, and you are going to eat it.” Danny stood, headed for the kitchen, and tossed back a, “Just so you know.”

Steve smiled, and felt inexplicably lonely without Danny next to him. He was relieved when Danny came back only five minutes later with a peanut butter sandwich and a big glass of milk, and that he resumed a place on the sofa, closer than before, to watch Steve eat. It turned out he was hungry after all. He polished the food and milk off in a couple of minutes.

“Thanks,” Steve said.

“No problem,” Danny said. He scooted over, so their shoulders bumped. “Someone’s gotta look out for you, since you don’t seem to be real great at that sometimes.”

Normally, Steve would take that as an opening to snipe and fake argue. But he didn’t want to do that, still not yet. He let it slide, because Danny wasn’t wrong. Sometimes Danny could be spectacularly wrong, but, conversely, the guy could be spectacularly right. Steve appreciated that about him. He wondered if Danny knew that; he probably did, knowing the way Danny knew things.

They fell into silence, sitting in the near dark. Steve lifted his feet to rest them on the top of the coffee table, enjoyed the warmth of his partner seeping into him where their bodies touched. The shoulders, thighs. He felt at peace, something he wanted to last forever even though he knew it couldn’t. He’d take moments like this, catalogue them to pull out when he needed them the most. It made total sense to him that he could get this peace with Danny alone, and he didn’t question it.

“I saw her when we were looking for you,” Danny said after a minute or an hour. “Jenna.”

Steve startled, and in his head he saw Jenna too, the moment before Wo Fat stepped between them and shot her dead. The shock of that moment, as if it had been truly unexpected, and then the rage that followed was as real as ever, made his heart beat faster even now.

“Oh,” Steve said, surprised when he sounded almost normal.

“I saw her, just a shell, you know. And for a second, I wanted to be glad she was dead, but I couldn’t. I wanted to hate her, I still do, but I can’t. Her voice, Steve, when she called to help us track you down. You should have heard it, but then you probably did, huh?”

Danny was in ramble mode, and Steve wanted to shut him up, because he didn’t want to think about this or relive it. But Danny needed this, whether he knew it or not, so Steve would listen. It was the least he could do.

“She was so scared, and it made _me_ scared. I hate being scared, you know that,” Danny said. He took a deep, shaky breath and ran a hand through his hair. “And when we found her body I was upset, but not about her so much, really. All I could think about was how we were going to find you like that, if we found you at all. I saw your blood, too, you know. I knew you’d been there, watched it happen.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” Steve said, and he was.

“Don’t. Don’t be sorry _for me_. Jesus, you lived it, not me. Just do not ever, and I mean ever, go off on your own again. I don’t think any of us could take it.”

Steve said nothing, because he didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. He’d never wanted to make that promise so much in his whole life, though, and that meant something.

“I wanted to hate her, too,” Steve said, “but in the end, I couldn’t. I understand why she did what she did. What would any of us do for the people we love? What would you do for Grace?”

“Anything,” Danny said instantly. “Absolutely anything. It just makes me so angry that I hurt because Jenna Kaye is dead, when she’s the one who put you in Wo Fat’s hands and made us almost lose you. And that ache in my heart doesn’t even make sense. It feels misplaced.”

“The last thing she did before she died was try to save my life.” Steve took out the necklace then, let it dangle for Danny to see. It glinted even in the dim light trickling in through the windows. “That counts for a lot. She counted for a lot. It wasn’t for nothing.”

“Please.” Danny pushed Steve's hand down, let his head fall against the back of the sofa, raised his own hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I don’t know why I brought it up in the first place, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about it. I don’t suppose you know any secret SEAL trick to dealing with shit like this?”

“There’s no trick,” Steve said, and shut up for a second. He set the necklace on the table. He felt unsettled, odd. “Sometimes the only way out is through.”

“What about you?”

“I guess don’t want to talk about it anymore, either.”

Danny cleared his throat and muttered something under his breath Steve didn’t have to hear to understand. Talking about it only stirred up what he wanted so much to suppress. Here and now, that was what he needed to focus on. After a few minutes of slightly tense silence this time, Danny’s hand fell into his lap, his breathing started to even out, deepen into sleep. Good, that was good. Steve thought about maneuvering his friend into a better position and going back to bed himself, but he simply sat with Danny’s warmth continuing to soak into him. That right there, the heat and closeness, that was what he wanted, and the strange peace that came with it. His eyes fell shut more than he closed them.

Steve woke; the third time since getting home, and his body was twisted in a way that would be awkward and painful even without his injuries. Beneath him he didn’t feel the softness of a mattress. It confused him for a moment, until he realized he’d fallen asleep on the sofa next to Danny. During the remainder of the night, Danny had shifted and reclined along the length of the couch and Steve had done the same, but on top of him. He lay his left hand on Danny’s chest. His physical pain grew, well past time for more meds, but he didn’t remember ever being so comfortably uncomfortable.

Danny came to with a soft snort, eyes blearily taking in their position.

“This is weird, right?” Steve whispered.

“It’s incredibly weird,” Danny said, smiled briefly and didn’t try to disentangle his legs from Steve’s.

Steve didn’t think about it. He didn’t plan it. It was as if he was on autopilot, his body five steps ahead of his brain. He kept his hand flattened on Danny’s chest and leaned down, pressed their lips together. Danny didn’t respond right away, but didn’t shy away, explode with indignation or disgust; he simply let Steve kiss him. Then his lips softened into the kiss, welcomed it. Steve moved his hand to run it through Danny’s morning-wild hair.

The kiss was _hello_ and _I know you_ and every cliché in the book, and that sent a thrill through Steve. Danny parted his lips, his mouth rank with sleep just as Steve’s was, but it was not unpleasant. They kissed slow, sure, and unhurried. Steve felt Danny’s heart beating against his chest as he shifted so he was flush with Danny, close as they could be. His ribs and shoulders twinged, but those things didn’t matter. If he could, he’d kiss Danny forever. Danny, the walking, talking epitome of aggravation, was his answer and his peace.

Steve slid his hand down so he could wrap his arm around Danny’s ribcage, ended the kiss. He rested his forehead against Danny’s.

“I thought about you,” he said, “the whole time.”

“So did I,” Danny said.

And Steve knew everything was going to be okay.


End file.
